A Selection of Souls
by catsintheattic
Summary: Souls, to a Dementor, are like chocolates in a box. Each taste reflects the essence of a particular soul. “If each soul has a unique taste, then what about Horcruxes?” you ask me. Let me tell you a story, son, the story of one particular Dementor.


**Author's ****Notes:** I was listening to Slugghorn's memory in HBP and all the talk between Dumbledore and Harry about Horcruxes. And from out of nowhere, this little plot-bunny emerged. For the sake of this story, I disregard the fact that Hogwarts was protected from Dementors.

My heartfelt thank-yous to Jaelle n'ha Gilla and to Diabolica for their multiple thoughts and ideas about the whole issue of _How could the different parts of Voldemort's soul be represented in tastes of chocolates?_ and _Does a Horcrux represent Voldemort at the age of its creation or the part of his soul that is related to the artefact?_ Thanks to Diabolica for the meticulous beta-reading.

Written for Ownficfest 2009 on Livejournal.

**Warnings:** soul-sucking, surprise character

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**A Selection of Souls**

So you want to know what makes a soul. What makes them so special, strong and fragile at the same time? I can tell you a bit or two about souls, if you're willing to spend some time to listen. You've got nothing better to do? You came to listen to me? That's good. So here's what I know about souls.

When we die, we part from our soul. Or rather, our soul parts from our body, and it flies towards the union of souls, eternity, bliss, nirvana – whatever you like to call it. It is a place beyond religion and morality, far greater than imagination could tell.

The soul's journey is a dangerous one. Predators lurk in the shadows to block its path, to drag it away and fill their bellies. Only a soul strong of will and pure of purpose will manage to escape their clutches.

"Demons and devils?" you ask me with bright eyes, and I shake my head. They are just the subjects of stories told in winter, when everybody gathers around the hearth to listen to a well-told tale. I'm talking about the real threats to a soul, the hyenas of the spiritual world. I'm talking about Dementors.

They don't just feed on the living. What a starving diet that would be, with the living clinging to their souls! Dementors come for the old and decayed, too. They take what rots. And the more rotten the prey, the faster they will suck the softening substance of the soul into their hungry mouths, leaving behind nothing but a barren, abandoned cage of flesh and bones.

Do they want to extract the fear a person feels in their presence? Oh no, son. The fear is just a side effect. It happens as the happy memories, captured within the soul, flee the body. The fear is what's left behind, because it clings to life the longest. It is the last thing a person feels before their wakeful mind leaves them forever. Dementors aren't fond of the sharp aftertaste of fear. I assure you, there are different tastes within a single soul.

Splitting the soul? That's right, it can be done. Who told you this? I thought it was a well-kept secret among your people, something they don't dare talk about freely. It can be done, and it has been done. Certainly, I can tell you more about Horcruxes. I know a Dementor who has made their acquaintance, thirty years and more in the past.

Wizards say that a Dementor is able to feel the change in the air when a soul is about to leave the body forever. He can detect it from miles away. It's his signal to come and feed without a chase, to have his fill without a fight.

So when one day in spring a soul died and made ready for its way to the great beyond, this particular Dementor I'm talking about felt a slight ripple in the air and knew that somewhere a soul was preparing for its journey. The Dementor floated into the air and followed the ripple. Very soon, he detected its source.

The secret for the Dementor is to get close enough, but not so close that the living might see. It wouldn't help the Dementors if every person knew about the fact that a soul has to run for its life right after death, would it? It's quite enough that most of them feel uneasy in the presence of their dead.

So, the Dementor floated above a huge castle. It was a magical place, and he could feel all the bindings and wards that helped to protect it. But the Dementor, as a different magical being, was not bound to the wards built to keep away human wizards. He was above their concerns. And so he floated nearer, through the huge doors and the great hall, through corridors and over staircases, until he reached a cavern deep down in the belly of the castle.

The scene that greeted him was ghastly, even for a Dementor's eye. In a dimly lit chamber, towering stone pillars entwined with carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. A monkey-like statue stood between the last two pillars, and below, a huge snake, a basilisk lay slaughtered on the stony floor in a pool of blood. But by the crook of its neck, there was the soul.

It was a young soul, the Dementor thought, merely in its teenage years. And it was apparently lost – a fact not even the confident swagger could conceal. The Dementor glided nearer easily. He took the soul by the shoulders from behind, turned it around and looked into the arrogant, handsome face of a boy. The boy was on the threshold of coming of age, almost a young man. The Dementor wasn't a creature to contemplate looks; he was too keen to taste. The young face took on an astonished expression, as the Dementor bent down, opened his mouth and suckled, almost tenderly.

The soul tasted crisp and superior, the single layers melting on the tongue, like the regal pride of a brittle toffee. The sharp intelligence of ginger roots was carefully hidden between the folds of the sweet. It tasted delicious, with just a hint of malice. And yet – as happens so often with souls of the young – the taste didn't last long.

The Dementor licked his lips, chasing a trace here or there, but there was disappointingly little left to chase. It reminded him why he didn't bother with looks: such a promising face and such a shallow flavour.

The soul was not much, and the Dementor soon forgot about it. He would probably not have remembered the whole affair, had a similar incident not occurred a few years later. This time, he was drifting along in the shade of a wood, protected from the summer sun, when he felt the pull of a soul being released from its mortal bonds. Soon, he was able to locate a neglected house at the edge of the forest. An old wizard stood on its threshold. He wore purple robes and half-moon spectacles, and he was clutching his right hand to his chest, as if in pain. The hand looked like someone had tried to burn it to ash. The wizard turned from the house and in the swirl of his Apparition, the Dementor noticed a flash of metal on his other hand. It might have come from a golden ring, but the wizard was gone too fast for the Dementor to identify the object.

With the house deserted, the Dementor felt the increasing intensity of the soul calling out to him, and he entered the house. Amidst the rumble that once might have been called a household by its owners, a rickety table and chairs lying on their sides, dusty pots and pans hanging above the stove, stood the soul of a boy. He was barely nine or ten, clad in the shabby but well-washed clothes of a child in public care. He stared at the Dementor, frozen on the spot, but his eyes were full of fight and spirit. If the Dementor had been a creature to feel pity, this would have been the moment for such an emotion. But the Dementor, free of such human ballast, simply laid his hands on the boy's shoulders, lowered his head and placed his mouth on that of the boy.

The Kiss was almost chaste. The boy's mouth slacked into an astonished "O", and all the Dementor had to do was suck his soul, no extra coaxing needed. He tasted the bitterness of cheap cooking chocolate, the kind that a friendly cook might give to a young boy as a treat. He felt the dusty crumbs of loneliness stick to his gums, and got a notion of cruelty and manipulation when the sharp tang of coffee beans added to the blend. In all his years of sucking souls, he had never met a soul so young with such a black taste and he couldn't help being reminded of the soul of the young man that had left him with a similar feeling that something important was missing.

But it took until the third encounter for the Dementor to notice a pattern. Some time later, in another forest, by a pool frosted with snow and cracked ice, the Dementor saw two young men walking away, their arms around each other for mutual support, their breaths puffing white in the cold air. One of them was drenched to the skin, his red hair plastered to his cheeks, and on his face the Dementor saw more water and a wild mixture of unidentifiable emotions. The other one, with tousled black hair, merely looked relieved. The Dementor watched them in fascination, and when he finally focussed on his prey, the soul had already begun floating towards the sky. The Dementor gave a little push to speed up and caught the soul mid-air.

It was a young man of about twenty years, and if the Dementor had ever encountered pride, it was here. The young man held his head high, even in the aftershock of death, and kissing him was everything the Dementor loved about a true, good Kiss. There was challenge and seduction and then, finally, surrender. Surrender that filled the Dementor's mouth with liquid triumph, a taste like the Gold Water of Gdansk. It was the triumph of the soul in his embrace, the pride of a master of alchemy and transformation, the triumph of life over death.

The alcohol stung on his tongue and the little flecks of gold rubbed against the tender tissues of his cheeks. It was almost enough to make him forget the emptiness that followed, emptiness similar to that he had encountered before on two different occasions. There was more to these strange souls. Or rather, should I say: there was less to them? Each was missing a piece that another brought into view. And it struck him for the first time that there had been no body on the ground in all three cases. He couldn't understand how he had failed to notice this before.

And finally, the Dementor began to see that all the different sightings of this boy belonged together, that they were parts of a single soul. The dawning of this realisation made him stop in mid-air, still not comprehending the full meaning. Why would a wizard split his soul apart? Why would he commit such an act of self-loathing and destruction against his most precious possession? The Dementor, an expert on all things concerning the soul, couldn't imagine a single reason for such behaviour. And he wondered if there were other parts of this soul hidden in the world. If so, what they had certainly couldn't be called a life. And even with his limited knowledge of what life meant to humans, he had an inkling that the terrible loneliness of the lost parts would pull him towards them, sooner or later.

He didn't have to wait long for the next piece of the puzzle to appear. Not more than a few months later, events started to speed up. He happened to be in the same area where he'd found the first piece of the soul when he felt a familiar ripple in the air – the sharp disturbance he'd learned to associate with the quality of this particular soul. He sniffed the evening air, and when he followed the traces, he reached the castle and in it the very same chamber where he'd tasted ginger root wrapped in brittle toffee. He came just in time to see a young man and woman clambering out of the chamber. The young woman had a molten silver lump clutched to her chest, whereas the young man – the Dementor recognised him as the red-head he'd seen by the lake in the forest – carried a broomstick. Both of them had their arms full of large, curved, dirty yellow objects. The Dementor paid them no further heed, whisked past them well above their heads and floated into the chamber.

The soul was but just a few months, maybe a year older than the one he'd drunk by the lake. But the difference between the two couldn't have been greater. Whereas pride had dominated the other one, this soul here was ruled by deception and disguise. There was no brazen tang of alcohol, but the sweet taste of sugar icing. A touch of lavender helped to smooth it further, to create the harmless mask of a shop assistant, the helpful and flirtatious demeanour of a salesman. And yet, under all that sugary sweetness, there was the silver gleam of ritual daggers, the metallic undertone of patience biding its time.

The contrast within the soul as well as to its companion by the lake was striking, and the Dementor couldn't help wondering what happened to the young man to change his soul so completely. Or rather, why the owner of this soul had felt the need for such a thorough disguise.

Had the Dementor not recognised the wizard behind the pieces of soul by now? You think they'd met? It is true, the Dark Lord had met with the Dementors, and he had convinced them to join his cause. But how, may I ask you, could the Dementor have related the pieces of the soul he'd tasted to the wizard who was making a bid for power? He'd never come in close contact with the Dark Lord, and even if he had: there was not much left of the Dark Lord's soul to reside in his body. He didn't carry the vibrations any longer that accompany those who have a soul. There was no temptation to a Dementor when meeting the Dark Lord. Why do you think he could approach them so safely in the first place?

You have no idea? I thought so. Are you done asking questions, now? May I go on with my story? That's good. Because, as you are about to see, things were really coming to a head.

The pieces kept coming faster every time, and so the Dementor decided to linger a little longer, to see if something might happen. And wouldn't you know, only about two hours later, he was called to the next piece of soul. The ripple could compare to nothing he had experienced before. Screams penetrated the air, pulling him forward with all their might, and he raced inside the castle past collapsing staircases and breaking down walls, past wizards and witches fighting for their lives, in his frantic answer to the call of the soul.

When he reached a high-ceiled room in the seventh floor of the castle, a blazing inferno greeted him. Two brooms rushed past him, each steered by a keen flyer through flames and heavy smoke. The first broom was clearly overloaded with two people clutching a third between them. The second broom carried two young men, the one behind the flyer screaming in terror. The Dementor didn't wait long enough to look a second time, and so he never knew who'd escaped the clutches of the Fiendfyre. For this was what was wreaking havoc in the room, a whirlwind of flaming serpents, Chimaeras and dragons. He slipped inside, heedless of the danger. The doors banged shut behind him and he rushed high up into the air to escape the flames.

There, in a corner of the ceiling, was the soul, panicked and raw with anger after being so forcefully torn from its shelter. The anger was born of pure loathing, and when the Dementor touched the soul and it swirled around, he looked into the face of the same young man he'd met before. He was still handsome, a charmer even. In his eyes the Dementor saw the cold determination of a Seeker looking not for the Snitch but for eternal life and immortality, the triumph of a plan to split his soul and hide away the pieces.

The Dementor tasted caramel, delicately spun into an intricate net of theories and dark magic, hard for most people to grasp. He tasted wit – man's greatest treasure – but without compassion, a hunger for knowledge that fractured into sharp splinters once he swirled it around in his mouth. And yet, as with caramel that has been touched too long by the fire, there was an aftertaste of burnt sugar, not sweet or delicate but blunt, a butcher's axe that was only good for killing.

The flames reached higher towards the Dementor, snapping at the hem of his robes, but when he looked around, an open window conveniently appeared to his right, and he slipped through it, and out into the fresh air. It was then that he saw that the sky was full of Dementors. They were gliding towards the castle in a steady, undeterred stream, ready to take every soul that wasn't able to fight. For a fleeting moment, he felt the impulse to join his fellows, but then he discarded it. He wanted all the pieces of this soul, and he had more than a slight inkling that the next piece was close.

The caramel stuck to his teeth, and he was still busy licking the last bits from his gums, still longing for fresh air, when he felt the next pull of the soul. He had fled the castle and floated towards the nearest forest, because forests were places of peace to him. The call pulled him deeper into the forest, and he followed, until he came to a small clearing in the woods.

The Dark Lord was there, surrounded by his followers. Death Eaters, they called themselves, and the Dementor had to suppress a smirk. The idea of humans eating death was about as insane as the idea of splitting one's soul. And yet, here they were, making war against other wizards and causing so many of them to die, freeing legions of precious souls. It was a feast, and if this was their idea of a good life, he wouldn't complain.

On the earth lay a young man, face down. It was one of the two the Dementor had seen by the pool, the one with the dark, unruly hair. He looked quite dead, but what was more interesting to the Dementor than the young man were the two souls in the trees above him. Two souls! The Dementor couldn't believe his eyes, and he floated nearer, eager but careful, so as not to scare them and chase them away. They were indeed two souls, entwined so neatly that they were hard to tell apart. One was still young; the Dementor soon recognised the tousled hair from the young man on the ground and then registered a scar on the forehead. The whole magical world knew about that scar, even the Dementor, who was not a particularly social being. I can see from your face that you know about it, too.

The other soul was much more familiar to the Dementor: another splinter of the soul he had been hunting down piece by piece. Only this time, it had aged. Gone were the last traces of handsomeness, and the last traces of humanity, too. The Dementor saw what one might have tried to call a man in his mid-fifties, but it was barely human. A slit for a nose, gleaming red eyes and a cruel mouth stood starkly in a dead-white face. On the snake-man's features shock fought with triumph, as if he had set out to accomplish an act of utter vileness and, in the moment of taking his prey, had been defeated.

The Dementor was torn. Here was the soul of the young man, fresh and ready to part from life, accompanied by the smell of treacle tart. And there was the twisted splinter, glittering pale and pearly like the cheap nonpareils sold to children at winter fairs. The choice should have been clear. But the Dementor, seeking completion, let go the younger, world-weary soul and took the other, which clung to life with such force that the Dementor felt he had to have it.

He kissed the paper-thin lips and tasted the staleness of old candy, covered with dust. He tasted years of scheming and waiting, a victory defeated by a backfiring curse. He tasted the thick sweetness in the blood of a narrow escape, the sweaty bitterness of confusion. It was the most disgusting piece of soul he'd ever tasted. And yet, he knew that he'd made the right decision. He was so close to completing his collection that he had to sample every last bite.

Meanwhile the young soul, alerted by the Dementor's presence, had slid back into the body of the young man. He still looked lifeless, and the Dementor couldn't help wondering how long the young soul would reside in a body that refused to live. Then, a woman walked from the group of wizards and witches towards the boy, bent down and examined the body. The Dementor heard her declare the young man dead, and yet, he saw no soul rise again. Nothing happened, not even when the Dark Lord started to throw curses at the young man's chest, flipping him around. The scene started to bore the Dementor, and he floated a little higher. The young man clearly wasn't dead, no matter how well he faked it, or how loud the group of Death Eaters rejoiced, and the Dementor wouldn't get this soul right now. Maybe he could catch one or two from the battlefield before he found the next piece of his collection.

It wasn't long, maybe half an hour, a little more or less, until he met the Dark Lord and his followers again. While they had gone by foot, he had floated in the air, feasting on a few souls he met on his way towards the castle, where the battle still raged. But when the Dark Lord appeared at the scene, announcing the death of the Boy Who Lived and demanding his enemies admit defeat, everybody stopped in their tracks. A hulk of a man, too much in tears to clearly see where he was going, carried in his arms the limp figure of the young man with the famous scar. He gently placed the body on the grass at the Dark Lord's feet and it seemed to the Dementor like everyone's world had come to a halt.

A Dementor knows no despair, but he felt that many of the fighters down there stopped their breath for a fraction in something that was as close to a soul being ripped apart as most human beings will ever come to the experience. They saw what they believed was death, and it was the reason for the tiny cracks in their souls. Cracks that would heal within time for most of them, but while healing would also leave the taste of crusted salt behind. Nothing tastes more like salt than the souls of mothers or fathers who have buried their children too soon.

While the Dementor was distracted with his musings about death and how it affected the taste of a soul, the Dark Lord had proceeded in tormenting his enemies. He was locked in verbal combat with another young man, who stood facing him, unarmed and unprotected, but with a determined expression on his face. His soul, thought the Dementor, would probably taste like fresh water from a spring. A few moments later the young man's face vanished under a huge hat, and then the hat burst into flames, the young man pulled a sword from out of nowhere and attacked – not the Dark Lord, but his giant pet snake – and sliced off its head in one fluid motion.

Chaos erupted, people screamed and fought and took up the battle, but the Dementor had eyes only for the soul that escaped from the great snake's carcass. Old and withered, the stink of seventy years of wasted life around it, it refused to be ensnared by the Dementor's power. He chased it as it assumed a zigzag course towards the sky, until the soul's speed lagged and the Dementor could finally grab it and turn it around. Its face, triangular and hairless like that of the snake, was a hideous sight. Its lips were contorted in an angry snarl. But, most strikingly, it refused to admit defeat and instead, stared into the Dementor's face with blood-shot eyes as if he could be controlled by a mind-altering charm.

Evil and helpless in its means – it was a sight that made the Dementor break out in laughter. And, laughing, he quickly sucked the thing into his mouth. The taste of bitter herbs flooded his tongue, a concoction thick like gall. It tasted like all the poisons of the world had been mixed into one. Long after swallowing, he still felt it stick to his gums, no matter how much he traced his tongue over his flesh to get rid of the taste. And yet, despite the taste, the Dementor felt a satisfaction that told him that his collection was almost complete. And it left him wondering about how the remaining pieces – or maybe a single piece? – would taste.

He didn't have to wait long, and I hope you agree with me that this was a good thing. For hadn't he waited long enough, from his first taste of the soul years ago to this lovely spring night to get so far? Well, I will tell you this, even though I think you know it by now: On this night, the Dementor was fully rewarded for his patience. When he focused his attention back on the battlefield below, he realised that the boy who had faked his death was facing the Dark Lord in a duel, one on one.

Everybody else had stopped fighting; they were busy watching the two wizards who circled each other in a deadly dance, like wolves about to tear each other apart. They must have been trading threats for quite a while, because suddenly, when the morning sun just hit the horizon, both raised the wands and yelled their curses at each other. To the Dementor, it didn't matter what they yelled. He only waited for the outcome of the bang. And a split second later, he knew in his heart – or what it is that takes the place of a heart in a Dementor – that this time, there would be a body; that this time, it would be over for good.

At first, he almost couldn't believe his eyes. Whomever he'd feasted on, he had almost never been able to taste their early years. The first years of a soul are usually lost under layers and layers of what comes later, the follies of youth, the accomplishments of adulthood, as well as the wisdom or bitterness of old age. So when he saw what looked like a flayed baby, he'd almost let it slip past him, until he realised its true nature. It was the last piece of the soul, even though it was almost unrecognisable in its misery.

He plucked it from the air and for a moment cradled it in his arms like a father would his child. It flailed against his arms as if in pain, its anguished cries pierced the air, and the raw skin of its torso looked like it was covered in a rash. Every shuddering breath was a struggle. The Dementor wanted to tell it that breathing was no good, that its fight was truly over. But then, what good would it do to try and talk to a baby, a creature without any reason?

To quickly put it out of its misery, the Dementor bent over the wailing thing and placed his mouth over its lips and nose and eyes. It was such a tiny critter. And besides, a baby's soul is still so trusting and open that it's reflected in the baby's eyes. It is just as easy for a Dementor to suck a soul from the eyes as from the mouth. But I won't bother you with the details of soul-sucking. That's not why you're here, is it?

The taste though ... I have to tell you about the taste to make my tale complete. The taste was ... peculiar. On the one side, it was pungent and sharp, an explosion of chilli peppers that bit and scraped the inside of the Dementor's mouth like a werewolf's claws. But on the other side, it tasted like the hot air inside candy floss. And while the Dementor wondered how something so young could taste so desperate and empty at the same time, the last bit of taste-or-not-taste melted away on his tongue, and what filled him was the deepest, utmost satisfaction he'd ever felt. Finally, he'd collected all the pieces.

There, son, are you happy now? I've told you almost all I know about Horcruxes, and why a Dementor will be drawn to them. They look for completion, like all creatures do, even those you wizards deem to be ugly, or evil, because you don't care to understand their reasoning or the cycle of their existence.

If a wizard came to try it again, would I know? Of course I would. I, after all, should know. You asked the one creature who could help you pull all the pieces of this riddle together.

I look into your eyes. They are green, just like the eyes of that boy I met almost thirty years ago. His soul smelled like treacle tart and he was willing to give up his life even though he feared death. All creatures fear death. But only some are fearful enough to sacrifice their soul for what can only be called a parody of life.

You seem so determined. I don't know the reasons for your quest, and I'm certain that, should I have cared to ask you, that I wouldn't have understood your answers. I won't bother to pretend otherwise.

It seems that time reflects on itself, like history is damned to repeat its dire course. You would have created the most powerful Horcruxes, of this I'm sure. If only I was willing to wait years again to collect all the pieces of a single soul.

And when I put my arms around you and pull you closer to finally share all of my knowledge with you, I see understanding dawn in your eyes, and with understanding comes the pain of loss. Hush, son, and stop struggling. You won't live forever. After all, no creature ever does. I cup your cheek and tilt your head to reveal your mouth. Any moment, I'm going to explore your beautiful soul. I can't wait to taste it – so full of determination and desire.

You asked the wrong creature. But at least you know what you're about to lose.

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The End


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